Lone
by Roadstergal
Summary: The sleeping arrangements on Starbug in VI and VII were a bit ambiguous. But Lister and Rimmer were no longer bunking together. And Rimmer was meaner than ever. Spoilers for most of VI. A little IDW in there. A bit of slash in one person's mind.
1. Chapter 1

They no longer shared bunks.

Kryten was the one who had been responsible for the distribution of their belongings. He had popped Lister into deep sleep and Rimmer into the icebox as soon as they had noted that Red Dwarf was lost and set out to follow the vapor trail. When Rimmer was rebooted, he noticed with suspicion and vague alarm that the meagre belongings that he and Lister had brought with them, on what was only supposed to be a short jaunt away from Red Dwarf, were put in pointedly separate rooms.

Yes, technically the sleeping quarters on Starbug were all singles. But they had spare bunks for emergencies, and how much room did a hologram need, anyway? Rimmer wondered, in his moments of paranoia, if this spacing was an intentional move on Kryten's part. Rimmer had noted an insanely jealous streak in the mechanoid where Lister was concerned, although Dave called him a pervert when Rimmer tried to bring it up. Rimmer was not good enough for Lister in that oversized can opener's mind, Rimmer was sure, and he was petrified that, somehow, every memory, every thought, every fantasy that he has ever had was recorded on his bee for posterity, and that Kryten had perused them at his 200-year leisure.

In his moments of extreme paranoia, Rimmer wondered if Kryten consulted with Lister before rebooting him.

Starbug's quarters were cramped, and any hostility hung in the air in a dull cloud. Starbug did not have the room that Red Dwarf provided for it to dissipate - for one or the other of them to just go away for a week or two and not see the rest. They saw each other every day, and in that air poisoned by resentment, every word was an insult, if looked at from the right angle.

They all looked at that angle.

Rimmer knew he was getting snippier and nastier every day. He knew he was turning from a mere smeghead into a truly mean man, and he could do nothing about it. Nowhere to regroup, nowhere to calm himself, nowhere to center himself, not even to the very nominal level he used to. If he had blood, he thought, he would have popped an artery by now.

Cat practically lived in Lister's room. The smug, smeggy feline would aaaaaaw and yeah his way in there most evenings, slinking into Lister's spare bunk, where Rimmer knew Arnie J. was not welcome. In the mornings, Cat would have a dish of milk and a scratch on the tummy before he and Lister left for duty, and did anyone ask if Rimmer might want the same?

Skip the milk. He hates milk.

But he was more than happy to disrupt their little slumber party with emergency drills as often as he thought he could get away with it.

His own room had sod-all in it. Pretty much all he had from life had been in that camphorwood chest, and the chest itself was rotting away in Starbug's storage decks, where it had sat like an uncomfortable cough ever since their stint on that winter planetoid. Rimmer tried, after he became hard-light, to acquire bits and bobs to make his stark sleeping quarters a little more homey, but his computer-generated heart was not in it. He went to his quarters only for the welcome unconsciousness of holosleep. It was truly ironic, he told himself - the only place he had any privacy on the blasted, creaking, taped-together, gurgly-piped ship was the one place he did not want it. The only place he had ever really talked with Lister. He settled into a routine after a distressingly short time. Lie in the bunk, look up at the blank ceiling. Feel very keenly the absence of Lister above him. Wank. Fall asleep. Wake, and spend every waking moment outside of the sleeping quarters.

He wondered how long he could keep it up. One of them had to lose it, under conditions like that. He was a competitive man, and proud of it; the competitive part of him wanted the loser to be someone else, and so he fed the stinking air with his meanness and pettiness, hoping to make it unbreathable.

The rest of him was dying, more and more,every day.


	2. Aftermath

**A/N: The story is solidly slash from this chapter onwards. This chapter takes place after Out Of Time.**

Rimmer sat at a grimy port set into the cargo hold on Starbug. He looked through the grease-streaked plexi at the dim glitter of the starscape and thought about tachyons. He thought about superlight particles streaking through the void, not bound by the petty rules of physics and three-dimensional space. He thought about ships without dingy, ill-lit cargo holds and sticky spills of beer in the cockpit. He thought about ships without haughty mechanoids and smug cat-people and irreverent space-bums. He thought about impossible escapes.

An irreverent space-bum eventually interrupted his reverie. The hiss of an opening door and the clonks and muffled curses of Lister stubbing his toes on their badly stacked supplies drifted towards him, and Rimmer tensed. He could not escape anyone on this blasted ship. He just wanted a little time alone. A century or so.

"Rimmeh, man, where the smeg are ya?"

Rimmer squared his shoulders and pointedly looked out of the viewport as if he could stare a hole in it.

The banging and clattering grew inexorably nearer. "Ach, there ya are, mate!" the voice sounded directly behind him. Rimmer did not look around. _Go,_ he made his body language say. Lister did not listen; he sat on a crate with a whump of expelled breath. "I was lookin' all over for yeh."

"Found, miladdo. Now off with you."

Lister leaned over Rimmer's shoulder to look out of the same viewport. Rimmer wrinkled his nose at Lister's beery breath, and sat back with a resigned sigh. Lister confirmed that the view from this port was the same starscape that was visible from the cockpit. He looked over at Rimmer.

"Whatcha lookin' at, mate?"

Rimmer considered any number of answers, from the truth to "Your mum's bare bottom." He chose silence, and crossed his arms while treating Lister to a thin-lipped stare. Lister looked a little confused. He had a Leopard Lager in his hand, and it didn't appear to be his first.

"Rimmeh, mate, we're celebratin'. No urine recyc. C'mon up." He grinned and waved his lager grandly.

Rimmer sighed and turned to stare very pointedly back out of the window. Lister's fingers grabbed the fabric over his shoulder and yanked. Rimmer turned to face him with annoyance.

"Look, man, are you just goin' to sit down here and sulk? Spoilin' the party. What, yer havin' a snit fit because your little hero act didn't work out? Stuff it. Come up."

Rimmer grabbed Lister's hand and pulled it off of his shoulder, flinging it away with two fingers as if it were a dead fish. "What, should I be _delighted_ that it didn't work out? The one smegging thing I've ever done in my life that wasn't self-serving and cowardly? The one thing I have ever done _right_? Should I dance a jig that it was all for nothing? Don't you think there's a little lesson here?" He realized he was standing, and spitting hologrammatic saliva at Lister; it fizzled to nothingness before landing, which probably contributed to Lister's composure in the face of this outburst. Rimmer shut his mouth with a snap, straightened his uniform, pointedly pulling out the shoulder, and sat down again.

"Well..." Lister swallowed, "it wasn't technically in yer life, mate."

"And that's supposed to make me feel better, is it?" Rimmer snapped.

Lister was silent for a moment while Rimmer seethed. The hologram looked out of the viewport and thought of holoships with lovely, caring women on them. He thought about Captain Platini, and wondered if it were possible to break a soft-light hologram's neck if you were a soft-light hologram yourself.

"Look, man..." Lister said, awkwardly, "I'm sorry. It was a good thing you did."

"Thank you for your kind words," Rimmer grated. "Now if you want to round out your generosity, smeg off."

Lister drummed his fingers on the almost-empty lager can in a manner that Rimmer found particularly irritating. "Yer lonely, aren't ya." It was not a question.

"I am the exact opposite of lonely. I am sick to bloody death of every last one of you goits."

"Yeh, and yer lonely. We're all crammed in together, and it's pissin' us all off. Yer not the only one who's been wantin' to stick appliances up some folk's arses. I becher wishin' you had stayed on the Holoship, and ta hell with Nirvanah."

The red mist was only a temporary thing, Rimmer decided, because when he came back to himself, the surprised look on Lister's face indicated that he had only just grabbed the goit by the shirt. He counted to as much of ten as he could remember, let go, and sat back down again. Lister cleared his throat. "Oi, mate, no call fer that."

"No call for you to say a word about her."

"It's just..."

"Not. A. Word," Rimmer growled.

Lister sat and looked at him, chewing on the end of one of his long braids. Rimmer glared at him with annoyance that was becoming increasingly tinged with the melancholy that had driven him down here in the first place. He wished, dearly, that Lister would just leave. He wanted Red Dwarf back. He wanted endless stretches of deck and cargo hold where he could lose himself for weeks at a time, then come back to his shared quarters and bicker amicably with Lister. The balance was upset.

"We don't really talk anymore," Lister said, finally.

"We talk entirely too much."

"We bicker an' squabble an' argue. We don't talk. We hiss an' spit on duty, and then we just bugger back to our rooms when we're done. I don't think I've even seen your room here."

"Suits me fine, Listy. I see you too much as it is." Damn it, why did the man have to echo his thoughts so closely?

Lister looked down at his feet. "I know I piss you off, and that isn't ever goin' to change. And you piss me off, and that isn't ever goin' to change. But," Lister looked up and gave the cherubic smile that Rimmer wanted to punch, "my 'gerbil-faced optimism' isn't ever goin' to change, either."

Rimmer grunted and tried to look back out the viewport. But his eyes kept darting back to where Lister sat and gently smiled at him. Rimmer finally gave up and turned back to Lister.

"What do you want?"

"I want things to be better between us, man. I'll always be a bum, and you'll always be a git. That doesn't mean we have to be at each others' throats. I wanna do better by you. And I sure as smeg want you to do better by me."

Rimmer turned back to the window and bit his lip. He could have taken anything Lister had to give; his arguing and sniping skills were honed to razor-sharp precision, now. He had a retort for any occasion, a putdown equal to any he might have thrown at him. His verbal repartee was in Olympic trim. But the one thing he had not expected, that he had no answer for, was this understanding that Lister had thrown at him. As if this below-the-belt punch were not enough, Lister's gloved hand on his cheek was soft and gentle. It softly and gently turned Rimmer's head back towards Lister. Rimmer's capacity for surprise must have been completely exhausted by the unexpected sincerity of Lister's last statement, because the brush of beery lips over his own came as only a mild startlement. But that one kindness was one kindness too many.

"Don't," he croaked. "Please."

"Why no'?" asked Lister, quietly, and kissed him again, more deeply. Rimmer wanted to protest, but he simply did not have the emotional energy; the friction of this entire Red Dwarf chase on Starbug had stretched him to the breaking point, and this act of Lister's slipped under his carefully constructed Git Armor and snapped him completely. He closed his eyes and thought of Nirvanah, whose lips were not so full, whose breath was not so toxic, but who was, in the same way, _kind_. Lister's tongue was more forceful, forcing Rimmer's mouth wider and plunging deeper, as if it were trying to somehow slip below the neurotic mess that was the Arnold Rimmer he presented to the world, and dig out what lay underneath.

When he finally broke the kiss, Rimmer's head was swimming. "You're drunk, aren't you," he sighed.

Lister laughed. "Nicely drunk, mate, no more." He stood, slightly unsteadily, and pulled on Rimmer's arm. "Come up to the party."

Rimmer pulled the hand off of his sleeve, but gave it a squeeze before letting go. "I'd like to stay here. But..." he made the effort, feeling the Rimmer he had been for the past several months flare his nostrils and glare witheringly at him, "thanks," he choked out.

Lister leaned down and said, "OK, mate, but I want to bunk in your room tonight. I'm scared of the dark, you know."

"How will sleeping in my room help?"

"I'll have a little light next to me." Lister giggled as Rimmer rolled his eyes. He kissed the hologram noisily on the cheek and made his toe-stubbing, cursing way back out of the cargo hold.

Rimmer turned back to stare out of the stained port again. He thought about tachyons. He thought about temporal paradoxes.

He thought about not sleeping alone, and allowed some part of him to be disgusted by how much that thought appealed to him.


	3. Tenacity

Rimmer lay in his bunk, very still. All of the lights were out - well, except for him. He was a projection of light, after all, and so retained a slight luminescence in the dark, just enough to illuminate with a dull blue glow the sharp edges of the grey niche that formed his bunk. It had been a dull red when he had been soft-light, and he had found it hard to fall asleep to it back then, as well. As a hologram, there were no catnaps (oh, and how he had grown to hate that word); he had to be very tired to be able to fall asleep at all.

He was not very tired. He was irritatingly awake. He scrunched up his eyes in another futile attempt to fall asleep.

He wondered if alcohol worked on his hard-light body. But that experiment would involve joining the others to get at it, and he did not feel in a mood to face them at all. Especially if Lister took the opportunity to follow him back. He already swung at a point of indecision between fear that the man would forget their conversation and not come down, or would not forget it and would come down. He had reviewed the kiss Lister had given him over and over, and vacillated between excitement and horror. He hesitated to consider where else that tongue had been; it most assuredly had not been brushed in any reasonable manner between the time it had been - wherever it had been - and the time it had been in his mouth. It had felt reasonably magnificent when it had been in his mouth, and he cringed to think that something that had been - wherever it had been - could feel so magnificent when it was, eventually, in him.

No wonder he was having trouble sleeping.

But he desperately wanted to be asleep at the time Lister either did not come in, the thought of which disappointed him, or did come in, the thought of which made his simulated viscera do opposing somersaults of excitement and dread. What the man might do, whatever other things of his he might care to stick into other bits of Rimmer - well, the hologram was not quite sure if he could handle it. He squeezed his eyes shut even more tightly.

A brighter light filtered through his eyelids in concert with the sound of a door opening. Lister's braying laughter became audible as the door opened, followed by an enthusiastically drunk "Jist seein' how the smeghead's doin'..." Rimmer waited for the door to slide shut again before opening his eyes. In the dim glow of himself, he could just barely see Lister standing in the middle of the room, blinking and looking around as he tried to acclimate his eyes to the darkness. His tatty jacket was half-hanging off, and a can of lager threatened to spray its contents on Rimmer's walls as Lister swung from side to side, peering into the dark with an inebriated keenness.

"Whersa lights?" he asked, squinting. His eyes did not take long to acclimate, and he focused on Rimmer. "Heeeey, theresh one!" He marched over to the bunk with a heavy tread that, Rimmer was sure, must have been knocking Starbug off course. Lister did some complicated maneuver involving one leg and a duck that resulted in him landing in the cubicle, straddling Rimmer, with his beer unspilled. It was a maneuver that looked as natural as walking, and Rimmer had the distinct impression that Lister had spent more than his fair share of time straddling people in regulation bunks in the past. He cringed back at the breath that wafted over his face, and kept his hands folded neatly on his stomach.

"Hey, shexy," Lister said with a grin that was almost a leer. He leaned in close, putting his hand on Rimmer's chest. He pulled the hand back and looked at Rimmer's chest with confusion. "You shleep in your clothes?"

"Well, not usually," Rimmer started, preparing for a lengthy explanation. Lister was not interested. He leaned back, looking behind him, and found another area of commentary. "You shleep in your _boots_?" He laughed long and hard. Rimmer grimaced.

"Did you come down here to make fun of me?" he asked, somewhat irate. He had not been on edge for hours merely so that Lister could sit there and snicker at him.

"Nah, man," Lister said, leaning down and running his hand along Rimmer's neck, "I came down to have shex with you... but I think I'm a little too drunk." Rimmer felt something akin to a simulated heart leaping into his hologrammatic throat, but whatever it was, it had plenty of time to settle back into its accustomed position. Lister fell forward once he finished speaking, resting his head on Rimmer's chest and sighing. Rimmer reached up to touch Lister's hips, not sure what to do with his hands; when nothing happened, he let them fall back to the foam pad that passed for his mattress. It did not take long for Lister to start snoring, breathing warm, beery breaths into Rimmer's throat as he straddled the hologram even in sleep. He somehow kept his grip on the lager, and kept it upright.

Rimmer sighed and looked at the ceiling of his bunk in the blue glow of himself. He was horny, now, but in a very confused and vague way; it was not enough to keep him awake. But the warm weight of Lister, and everything he did and might possibly represent, was indeed enough. Rimmer focused on breathing, wondering if he was going to remain there until Lister woke up; in typical Rimmer fashion, freezing under duress and leaving the decisions to someone else.

A tentative knock sounded at the door. Rimmer's head shot up.

"Mister Lister? Are you all right?"

Bugger. Kryten. Rimmer looked down at where Lister lay in a deep and apparently very contented sleep, his head on its side, drooling slightly on Rimmer's uniform, his thighs resting on the outside of Rimmer's. This was nothing the android needed to see, Rimmer decided. He shifted to soft-light with a gentle whumph, letting Lister fall through him with what looked like a rather uncomfortable thump. Rimmer looked anxiously at the hand holding the lager, but it kept the can in a firm grip; Lister was not about to waste lager, even in sleep. Rimmer then set to extricating his light bee from underneath Lister. The other man had sandwiched it neatly between himself and the foam pad, and Rimmer jerked and wiggled to try to work it free. Having a little metal sphere bouncing underneath him finally irritated Lister enough to make him grumble and shift in his sleep, allowing Rimmer to jerk free. Rimmer straightened his perfectly straight red uniform and walked to the door, where Kryten had started to knock a little more insistently. "Mister Lister!"

Rimmer switched to hard-light, touched the Door Open switch, and leaned out as it opened on a somewhat worried Kryten. "He's passed out on my bunk," Rimmer said in an exaggerated stage whisper. "I think we should leave him there to sleep it off." In answer to the question that was forming on Kryten's features, Rimmer stepped out, allowing the door to close, and jerked his thumb at the cockpit. "It's my turn on watch, anyway." Kryten nodded, satisfied, and headed down to the laundry deck.

Rimmer settled into his usual chair in the cockpit with a sigh of satisfaction. Even after all these months with the hard-light drive, he still relished the feel of a chair under his arse; a firm, solid _thing_, not the absence of sensation that he had to sit on as soft-light, trusting to his soft-light drive's boundary-sense algorithm to keep him seated. He ran a full set of utterly unnecessary systems checks, then looked carefully around the cockpit and the midsection. Satisfied that nobody was about, he pulled a ratty paperback from between the console and the wall, and settled back to read.

"I din' know you still had paper books left," Lister's voice said. Rimmer jumped slightly; he was three-quarters finished, and had lost all track of time.

"I've been picking them up on derelicts. I didn't want you to burn them," Rimmer groused. He put the book down. Lister stood in the cockpit entryway, his back to the metal doorframe, finishing up what looked disturbingly like the can of lager he had brought to bed last night.

"Oh, eh," he said, his eyes widening, "I don' burn 'em for fun, man! That was just to keep warm." He walked to his chair at the front of the cockpit, and sat in it backwards, looking at Rimmer. He patted his pocket. "I've still got page sixty-one, you know. If the rest of these book things are that twisted, I might get into 'em."

Rimmer twisted his mouth, considering. "I did find some romance novels. All about heaving bosoms and throbbing members and the like. You're welcome to them." He paused, considering. "The only time I would really describe my member as "throbbing" is when Porky kicked a rugby ball into my crotch when I was twelve."

Lister grinned. "I've had my share of heaving bosoms, though. 'Specially when I invited girls up to see my room. Kept 'em heaving for a while, usually."

Rimmer looked down at his hands. Lister took another sip of flat lager and stared at him. An uncomfortable silence fell over the cockpit.

Lister finally broke it with a cough. "Hey, man, I gotta ask." Rimmer looked up at him. "What do yeh want?"

"What do I want?" Rimmer asked, chewing the words. Lister nodded. Rimmer worked his mouth for a moment, indecisive. He had no idea. It was not his nature to know what he wanted. It was his nature to be told what he wanted, and then to fail to achieve it.

"I don't know," he said, finally.

Lister nodded and stood up. He walked over to Rimmer and straddled the hologram's thighs, seating himself on Rimmer's lap. He leaned in and kissed Rimmer solidly, lips on lips. "Well," he said, pulling back, "think about it some, would ya? Because..." he leaned in and kissed Rimmer again, this time opening his mouth and prodding Rimmer's lips open with his tongue, then running that stale-lager flavored muscle over the inside of Rimmer's cheeks. Rimmer found his hands creeping up to the small of Lister's back, and he opened his mouth wider, enjoying the sensation. All too soon, Lister leaned back, breaking the kiss. "...I do know what I want, man."

Lister pulled himself off of Rimmer's lap and wandered back into the midsection. Rimmer leaned his elbow on the console and his head on his hand, pondering. A Blue Alert sign flashed, and a klaxon began to wail. Rimmer sighed and shifted his elbow off of the Alert button, finding the abrupt return of relative silence a better atmosphere for pondering.


	4. Turning

"D'ya know something?" Lister asked, dipping his poppadum in the lurid minty green sauce and taking a bite.

"Yes, actually, I do," Rimmer replied airily, not looking up from his book.

Lister plunged ahead. "We'll run out of curry again in three months. Kryten should never have smashed the time drive." He waggled his poppadum at Rimmer. "What'll we do when we run out, eh?"

"Celebrate?" Rimmer suggested, closing the heavily worn and dog-eared book on astronavigation he had found in the cargo hold while doing as little as he could get away with towards cleaning it up. The previous owner had left a substantial number of practical notes in the margin, and whether it was because of those or because it now did not matter one bit towards his career prospects whether he learned it or not, he was finally beginning to understand basic physics and how they applied to interstellar travel. "Lister, smashing that time-drive may be the only halfway sensible thing that erector set on steroids has ever done."

Lister sighed and contemplated the hot pocket of spicy vegetable mush in his hand. "I know, paradoxes and breakin' our destiny line and all. Still - three months! Then back to that horrible veg crap Kryten calls food!"

"You could try... oh, I don't know... _rationing_ the Indian food?"

Lister looked at Rimmer over the midsection table, and for a moment, a look of acute pain passed over his features. It quickly turned to hope. "Maybe we'll find more supplies on a derelict somewhere."

Rimmer folded his arms. "What we _should_ do is go back into deep sleep. We lost our chance to head Red Dwarf off. We're just aging pointlessly and losing time on supply runs."

Lister shook his head. "Lose another two hundred years! Nah, man!"

One of Rimmer's eyebrows lifted. "Two hundred years on top of three million? Pocket change. Would you rather have lived out your life and died on Starbug instead of sleeping through it?" He took a sip of his tea. He rarely ate - eating again had lost its appeal with startling rapidity - but he never missed tea. Something comfortable and civilized would always be attached to tea.

Lister chewed thoughtfully on another bite of poppadum. "Maybe, " he said, a few little bits of filling flying over to land on Rimmer's blue uniform. Rimmer pointedly picked each bit off and flicked it back across the table to Lister as the other man continued. "I mean, yeah, I miss Holly and all, but wouldn' we be missin' a lot if we had slept through the last few months? I mean, you wouldn't have yer hard-light drive, for one. Mebbe we'll find some super-duper drive thing that'll let us catch the Dwarf that we'd miss if we was asleep."

"Super... duper... drive... thing." Rimmer enunciated the words with care as he made a note on the inner back cover of his book. Lister stuck his tongue out.

"You know wha I mean, man."

"Or maybe I'll strangle you with your own nostril hair the next time I catch you pulling them out with kitchen implements."

"Well, that's better'n tryin' to stick a fridge in me. You know," Lister added with a giggle, "there are some other things I'd rather have ya stick in me..."

Rimmer did not have to breathe, so Lister did not understand how it was possible for him to choke on a mouthful of tea that was on its way down. He rose halfway out of his seat to look at where Rimmer sat coughing on the ground. "Eh - you all right there?" Rimmer, still unable to speak, demonstrated with two fingers that he indeed was not. Lister took this as a sign that all was well, and sat back to enjoy the rest of his meal.

Kryten walked out of the cockpit. "Changeover." He looked down at where Rimmer sat on the ground, the tea almost expelled from all incorrect passages. "Is Mister Rimmer all right?"

Lister glanced over and shook his head. "Nope." Satisfied that all was normal, Kryten headed down to the laundry room.

Rimmer gave one last hack and pulled himself to his feet with the help of the table. He mentioned a few choice places where Kryten could stick his head, and walked into the cockpit. Lister put his boots up on the table and pulled his plate onto his lap. He closed his eyes and ate the kebab with his fingers, slowly and deliberately, savoring the rich fire.

He did not get up from the table until he was done. He walked into the cockpit, licking the last of the grease off of his fingers. He had intended to merely wish Rimmer goodnight, but the hologram had been doing something at the console that caused his head to be bent down, and the bit of pale skin that showed between his dark blue collar and the bottom of his teeth-grittingly neat haircut was irresistible to Lister. He licked it from left to right on one broad swipe, and felt Rimmer shiver as he finished.

"Eh, man," he muttered in Rimmer's ear. "C'mon down when yer done." He started to walk out, but turned back at the door, catching Rimmer glancing up at his retreating back. The hologram looked back at the console quickly. "If yeh want to," Lister finished with a grin.

Back in his room, Lister tried to pull his knitting off of the table. This proved to be a more difficult task than normal, as Cat was asleep on the table. He hissed and lashed out at Lister in his sleep as Lister tried to tug the scarf-in-making (or was it a tea cozy? bath mat?) out from under Cat. "Hands off of the spats, you bitch!" he hissed, eyes shut, swiping blindly with his sharp nails. Lister finally gave it up as a bad job, prodding at a scratch on his cheek. He pulled off his boots and overalls and hopped into bed, calling the lights out.

He awoke to a dark room. A dull kathunk-kathunk noise sounded like a noise that would have woken him up. He could make out a pale blue glow. "Lights - dim," he mumbled, and they obligingly lit to about half of their normal sickly dullness. Cat was no longer on the table, and Rimmer's boots made one last kathunk-kathunk before stopping, as Rimmer did.

Lister hiked himself up on one elbow, arranging himself into a position that most of the girls he had dated had assured him looked suggestive - although judging by his expression, Rimmer would probably just assume that Lister was releasing a silent-but-deadly. Lister sighed. There had been all too many late nights - or early mornings - like this; Rimmer would come to his room when Cat was away, or he would go to Rimmer's, and they would talk for minutes or hours, gently sniping, saying nothing of importance; what they were _not_ doing would hang over their heads, eventually driving the visitor back to his own room. Sometimes they would kiss, sometimes deeply; those times, Lister _had_ to wank to get back to sleep, and he desperately hoped that Rimmer did, as well.

"Hey, man," he said with a sleepy grin. "Anythin' excitin' happen?"

Rimmer did not answer, but sat on the edge of the bunk, his back to Lister. "AR and" he cleared his throat "yourself aside, you haven't had sex in what - three million years, two hundred asleep, three or so since?"

Lister's grin fell. This was a very different opening, and he was not sure what to make of it. "Well, plus a few weeks before stasis, ya know."

Rimmer muttered 'weeks,' and shook his head. Lister contemplated the over-the-shoulder three-quarters view he had of Rimmer's face as the other man continued. "So it's been a while."

Lister's elbow was beginning to ache; he turned to lie on his back. "Whot are you gettin' at?"

Rimmer turned to face Lister, not quite meeting the other man's eyes. "Have we finally reached the point at which two blokes lost in space are so horny that they'll do anything? And anyone?"

A convenient answer lay at hand for _that_ one. "Would yeh sleep with Cat?"

"I'd rather remove my testicles with a butter knife."

"Well, there ya are, then."

Rimmer looked around the dimly lit room. He turned back to Lister, and looked the other man up and down. Lister started to feel very uncomfortable. "What?" he asked, raising himself up onto his elbows.

Rimmer resumed looking over the room. "You've neatened yourself up a bit, haven't you?"

Lister looked around, and had to agree. His room was cluttered, but it had not been a proper sty for months. He had thrown out his moldy cultures, and sent his laundry down on a weekly basis. His long johns were actually white, these days, rather than a modern-art kaleidoscope of spice stains. He was not sure why. It had just felt - ludicrous, lately, to live the way he had been. "Yeah, I just got tired of living like smeg, I guess."

Rimmer cleared his throat. "And what do you want me to do?"

Lister lay back down again, startled. He had not considered that his neatness might be construed as... wooing. He snorted. Wooing _Rimmer_? He looked back up at the hologram, who was staring at him with one eyebrow raised - his snarky attitude not concealing the nervousness that the stiffness of his shoulders and the tongue that kept darting out to lick his lips insisted on betraying. Well - perhaps. Maybe. But more likely just a convenient coincidence. Yes. As for Rimmer... "Want you to do?" Lister shrugged, wiggling against the mattress. "Do what you want, I guess." He looked at the ceiling and thought. "You aren't such a coward as you used ta be. You're still a right bastard, but you've sorted yerself out. That's enough for me."

"Are you sure?" The heartfelt uncertainty in Rimmer's voice was a rarity, a part of the other man that Lister could only recall overhearing as Rimmer was menaced by his internal demon on the psi-moon, and heard directly only in the jail on Rimmerworld.

"Yeah, man," he replied, feeling, somehow, responsible for this baring; as if he had been entrusted with something that was beyond his ability to adequately care for.

This seemed to reassure Rimmer, however, and the hologram turned and started to kiss Lister, tentatively. Lister smiled; this, at least, he understood. He pulled Rimmer closer and opened his mouth, kissing him more deeply.

It was awkward, as all first times are; the awkwardness slightly compounded by neither man being quite sure about the mechanics of the act between two men. Some bumping of limbs and accidental movements to simultaneously occupy the same part of the bunk were inevitable, as were the mood-breaking apologies, shushed with kisses as quickly as possible. They eventually settled into a reasonably satisfying nude variation on frottage, Lister rubbing against Rimmer's stomach, Rimmer slipping his erection between Lister's legs. Rimmer came first, but was almost immediately erect again; Lister had to wonder if this was inherent to Rimmer, or some side effect of the hard-light drive. These thoughts were appropriately driven out by his own orgasm, and smeg, on a very visceral level, it was so bloody satisfying to climax with his hands on someone else's body, kissing and being fondled himself. He sighed and rubbed Rimmer's back as the other man finished what Lister counted as his third round in what he estimated to be about fifteen minutes. He filed _that_ datum for future reference.

A little more awkwardness ensued as they tried to find a comfortable position for sleeping. They finally ended up with Lister on Rimmer's arm, his head on the hologram's shoulder, his arm flung across Rimmer's stomach. This allowed Lister to kiss and lick the hologram's chest for a few minutes more, marveling at how it tasted and smelled just like a freshly sweaty human chest. He could feel no heartbeat, though; just a low, almost-inaudible hum that he found almost compellingly lulling. He let himself be lulled, closing his eyes and relaxing. "Schleepwell... Arn..." he mumbled. Rimmer's voice rumbled through his ear as the hologram called the lights off, and the grip on his shoulders tightened for a moment, then relaxed, as he drifted into sleep.

Cat danced out of the cockpit, vaguely startled that he had not seen dormouse cheeks stuffing his face or goalpost head being a prat in the midsection. It was rare not to see one or both of those sights when he left his shift. But these thoughts were squashed by the realization that he had not done his hair in half an hour, and he hurried to Lister's room, where he had left his favorite comb. He stopped outside of the door, sniffing, and a look of utter disgust crossed his features. He would make do with his second-best comb, he decided as he hurried away from the smell of sex that wafted out from under the door like a Do Not Enter sign. He wrinkled his nose. Monkeys were _strange_.


	5. Marks, pt 1

**A/N: These two chapters take place between Pete and Only The Good.**

Ackerman was not pleased.

He had not had jiggy-jiggy with the science officer's wife since that ill-fated day when he had such trouble getting out of the costume. She had apparently not appreciated their liaison becoming general knowledge. Well, why not? Wasn't it flattering for all to know that she had attracted the affections of Nicey Ackerman? Apparently not. The last time he had dropped in, she had attached a small tunneling explosive to his utility belt, lit it, and kicked him back outside. _That_ had left a mark.

The blame lay squarely with Rimmer and Lister. His grievances with them did not stop there. Although Ackerman had no evidence that the distinctly oniony smell in the living room and the distinctly fishy smell in his bedroom that had turned off his red-hot date two weeks ago was due to those two, he did not need evidence. Evidence was for wimps.

These thoughts had Ackerman in high dudgeon as he stalked into the captain's office in response to a rather perfunctory summons. Hollister was far too preoccupied with a phone conversation to notice that Ackerman was in a terrible mood. Insensitive prat, Ackerman thought.

Hollister covered the mouthpiece of his phone as Ackerman walked in. "Ackerman. We're coming up on an S3 planet. The lab boys say there is one big life sign down there. Never a good thing. Send down some Canaries you wouldn't mind seeing the last of, would you?"

"Yes, sir!" Ackerman said, feeling good for the first time in weeks. He saluted Hollister briskly. Hollister did not notice; he had gone back to shuffling papers and talking to whoever was on the other end of the phone. Ackerman turned on his heel and walked out, wondering if Hollister had read a word of what was on those papers. He rather doubted it; he could not see how lemon poppyseed cake had any relevance to the drive plate issue discussed thereupon.

------

A rather sweet voice drifted out of the cell Rimmer and Lister shared, followed by a teeth-gratingly out-of-tune guitar chord, two strings muffled to a buzz by rolled-over fretting fingers. "Mmmmm... Awwwww... I traveled across the rivers of..." _ptwannrgggnnn_

"LISTER!"

Lister looked up from his guitar. "Whoa? What's up?"

Rimmer looked up from the table, where he had been attempting, unsuccessfully, to ignore Lister's train wreck of a guitar recital by reading. Lister sat cross-legged on his bunk, grinning with an all-too beautific expression on his face. "Lister, that guitar will never heal if you keep picking at it."

"Hey, man, I wrote this song for you!" Lister protested, shifting on his bunk.

"A funeral march?"

Lister sighed and scratched at his rasta plaits. "I just can't do anything nice for yeh, can I?"

"You could let me smash that guitar into tiny tiny pieces."

Lister shook his head with a grin. He had strings again, and even Rimmer's whinging could not put him in a bad mood. He loved his guitar like a girlfriend. Better than a girlfriend. He strummed it again, tenderly. _pwranng_ _thwang_ _peeeeang_ "A've waaaaaiiiiiited so long..."

Rimmer leapt to his feet and tried to grab the guitar away from Lister. Lister tried to kick him in the nuts and pull it back. When the guard entered the room ten minutes later, Rimmer had Lister in a headlock and was attempting to jam said head into the toilet, and Lister had managed to rip one leg of Rimmer's jumpsuit up the side and tied his legs together with the free end. The guitar lay forgotten on Lister's bunk.

"Prisoners!" the guard bawled. Rimmer dropped Lister and attempted to leap to attention and salute. His legs caught in the knot, and he crashed to the floor. Lister giggled and jumped back on his bunk, smiling genially at the guard.

"Canary suicide mission!" the guard yelled, once he saw that he had their attention. "Report at oh-seven-twenty!" He paused, looking at them both, and added, "Today!" He spun on his toe and left.

"Just enough time to finish me song," Lister said, grinning, and managed to get another two verses out before Rimmer got himself untied and leapt at Lister again.

------

When the two of them finally reported for duty, fifteen minutes late, they could not help noticing that the mission for which they had been summoned was being conducted by a somewhat less-than-elite group of the two of them, Cat, Kryten, and Kochanski. Ackerman glared at them, but made no other mention of their lateness.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Lister hissed at Rimmer.

"You have a bad feeling about a suicide mission? What on Io gave you that idea?"

Ackerman strode down the stairway. "Canaries!" he said, his formal manner more appropriate to a gathering of the whole community, rather than the very small group in front of him. "We have another opportunity for you to serve the Corporation. We have located a planet. We need you to investigate the single life sign that we have detected from its surface. I expect," he glared at them pointedly, "a _very_ detailed report." He turned and walked back up the stairs, staring down at them imperiously as they were herded out by the guards.

"That wasn't much of a briefing," Kochanski muttered as they ducked into the lander. They sat on the bench that was usually far more crowded, and the door swung shut. Rimmer sat back with his arms crossed and sulked. Lister hunched forward, his elbows on his thighs, and brooded. He kept forgetting that he had something to lose. It's all to easy to prank and make mischief when you're in the Tank - after all, what are they going to do? Throw you in prison? No, you tit, they are going to throw you somewhere with an even lower survival rate than a Wagner festspiele.

"No, ma'am," Kryten replied. "I would venture to guess that they are less concerned with the life sign on the planet than with the ones on this lander. Ackerman has been unusually hostile to us in the past twenty-seven days; I would imagine that this mission is, in some way, a revenge for some slight he believes we have perpetuated on him."

"What did we do to him? Or what does he _think_ we did to him?" Kochanski asked, puzzled.

"Well," Cat interjected, smoothing his hair back and re-tying it, "baldy hasn't gotten any action since last month. He smells like sexual frustration on legs."

"Yes, last month!" Kochanski repeated, the look on her face indicating that much was coming clear to her. "Ever since you..."

The three of them turned to where Lister and Rimmer sat, and glared.

"Brilliant prank, that was," Lister muttered. Rimmer nodded, frowning sadly. "He mighta been in a better mood," Lister continued, "if Hollister really had stayed in the hole for twelve months. He sure got over that fast, though, din' he?"

"Someone slipped him a donut, and he forgot all else," Rimmer muttered.

"So, let me get this clear," Kochanski said with some heat. "We are being sent on a suicide mission because Ackerman is sexually frustrated because of a prank that _you two_ pulled because...?"

"Because we thought it'd be a laugh," Lister sighed.

"It was!" Rimmer insisted stubbornly.

"That is _great_ consolation to the rest of us," Kochanski snarled, turning her back on them. Lister could not blame her. She was guilty by association of everything that the rest of the group did, even when she had nothing to do with it, and it would rankle on him, as well. He did not mind getting into trouble. He would mind it very much if he did not get to enjoy the prank that had gotten him into trouble.

The lander landed, jolting him out of his reverie. It nearly jolted him out of his skin. It landed with a shot-from-a-cannon plunge, and all were tossed about as the lander plowed to a halt with the sound of stressed metal creaking and wailing. The interior lights flickered out, and the door grated open onto a snowstorm borne on a howling gale.

Lister groaned and extricated himself from a tangle of limbs. He felt a lump on his forehead gingerly. However, the rest of him appeared intact. He turned to try to sort out the mass of Canary that was twitching and struggling on the ground. Kryten was, of course, fine, if terribly apologetic about anyone he may have inadvertently hit; Kochanski was convinced she had cracked some ribs, and walked to the corner of the lander, hunched over and glaring. Cat's hair was a mess, and he snarled obscenities at Lister as he attempted to put it back into place without the help of a mirror. Rimmer had a split lip and a bruised shin.

"Right! Not bad at all; coulda been a lot worse, yeah?" The other four glared at him. He swallowed and lead the way out into the snowstorm.

The canary uniforms were far too hot for the ship, and they were not nearly warm enough for this weather. Despite mutual animosity, the four living creatures ended up huddled in a pack to try to conserve warmth. The planet itself was a wasteland of snow. No mountains, not even much in the way of a hill; the gale whipped its way across the surface unobstructed, carrying snow flurries that stung like birdshot. The sky was leaden; only a token amount of dull sunlight filtered through what appeared to be an eternal winter. The planet was in grayscale; no greens, reds, or other vaguely lifelike colors appeared. The five Canaries stood out like a saxophone solo in a requiem.

"Life?" Lister bawled over the gale, shivering. "What on earth would anything out here live on"

"Don't _ask_ things like that!" Rimmer yelled back, his teeth chattering. "Probably Cat starters, human and bum main course, and juicy Kochanski for afters."

"Maybe it'll be too full when it's done with the rest of you," Kochanski suggested, hopefully. "Or too sick."

"Kryten," Lister asked, trying to head off another argument, "what does the psi-scan say about that life sign?"

The mechanoid took out the scanner and considered it as they walked. He frowned. He hit it on the side. The frown deepened.

"Kryten?" Lister repeated.

"The readings are ambiguous," Kryten replied, still looking as puzzled as an andriod with an igloo for a head can look. "It appears to be in the vicinity, but I can't pinpoint it. The scanner might not be designed to function correctly at this temperature. It's a great value for the money, but it's not exactly all-terrain."

Lister sighed. Kochanski pointed at something that looked exactly the same as every other part of the scenery. "Look! Shelter!"

Lister squinted. 'Shelter' seemed to be overstating the case somewhat. A very small, white hillock rose up from the blasted white ground. You would have to be neurotically possessive to play King of the Hill on it. But still, it was more shelter than was visible anywhere else. They headed for it, and the four living beings bunched together tightly on the lee side of it. Kryten sat opposite them, fiddling with the psi-scan.

Rimmer looked at his gun dubiously. "Will _these _work in this weather?"

Kochanski shrugged. "Who cares? This will," she said, hefting the tranquilizer gun she had taken from the lander, "and it will do us more good."

Rimmer frowned at it. "You don't get bonus points for bringing it back alive, I think."

"Given previous experience, it's bound to be a GELF, isn't it?" she asked, patronizingly.

"Yes..."

"Most of the GELFs that were designed for military use were designed to be blaster-proof, weren't they?"

"Sure..."

"And they were designed to be vulnerable to tranquilizer darts, so they could still be controlled, weren't they?"

Rimmer crossed his arms and sulked.

"I just wish I knew how big it was," Kochanski fumed, tossing a handful of differently-sized darts in her hand, each tapering to a needle-thin point. "I don't want to give a gerbil dose to an elephant." She sighed and loaded the biggest dart into the gun.

Lister, meanwhile, had taken off his backpack and dug out a dull metal container. He was not going out without a good lunch. He pulled off the top, and inhaled deeply as the self-heating unit instantly took it up to a comfortably toasty temperature. He opened his eyes and saw Cat, Kochanski, and Rimmer staring at him.

"Mutton vindaloo. Bob got it for me," Lister grinned. He took another inhale, then dug a titanium spork out of his backpack and started to dig in. He paused after one delightfully messy bite. "Sorry - do you want some?"

Looks of acute disgust settled onto the faces of Cat and Kochanski. But Rimmer was looking at it with interest. Lister dug out a sporkful of dripping meat and held it out. Rimmer took a bite and chewed for a moment. His eyebrows shot up, and he fell face-first into the snow and started to eat it.

"Y'ok?" Lister asked.

Rimmer's voice was muffled by the snow. "HOT!" Smugness had displaced disgust on Cat's and Kochanski's faces.

"Actually, it's kinda bland 'til you spice it up a little." Lister dug into his medikit and pulled out his precious bottle of Tabasco, sprinkling it liberally on the dish.

Kochanski's eyes widened. "You replaced your emergency antibacterials with Tabasco?"

"Sure," Lister replied. "This'll kill any bacteria it touches." He smiled at her grimace, then downed another sporkful of curry and closed his eyes, savoring it.

A noise drifted to them over the sound of the gale. It sounded like the moan of an ancient jar of pickles being opened. Rimmer sat up, snow on his face. Kochanski and Cat looked around. Kryten fiddled with the scanner.

"Please tell me that's your stomach," Kochanski said nervously, grasping the tranquilizer gun to her chest.

"Neh," Lister replied, looking around. The noise returned, slightly louder. "Cat, can you smell anything?"

"I can smell you," Cat growled. "If you think I can smell anything else over that, you're nuts."

Any retort Lister might have come up with was forgotten as a loud roar sounded. All five leapt to their feet and looked around, clutching guns and psi-scans and, in Rimmer's case, Lister's shoulders. "What the hell was that?" Rimmer gasped.

Kryten's eyes widened. "I believe we have found the life-form, sirs."


	6. Marks, pt 2

Kryten's eyes widened. "I believe we have found the life-form, sirs."

The other four turned, slowly, to note that the hillock they had been resting against was moving. It shuddered from side to side, then rose abruptly to become a... well, a beast, twice the height of your average human, covered in shaggy white fur, with a triangular mouth, pointed ears, and heavily lashed dark eyes. A paw-like hand flashed out, and Rimmer ended up dangling by one leg at the other end of it. Cat fired at the beast with his blaster; five bolts hit it with no effect, and it batted Cat away almost offhandedly with a swipe of its empty paw.

Kochanski fired a tranquilizer dart at it as it turned back to consider the yellow plaything it was holding, and it staggered backwards with a howl. Its eyes narrowed, and it opened a mouth full of jagged yellow teeth. It took a meaningful step towards Kochanski, and swept Rimmer at her like a mace. She fell to the ground as he whistled overhead. Lister looked at that mouth, looked at his lunch, and pitched the latter into the former.

The beast caught the tin in its mouth, and crushed it. Bits of metal and trickles of sauce dribbled out from its lips. It paused for a moment, and howled again - this time in earnest. It dropped Rimmer and plunged its own face in the snow, grabbing double-handfuls of it and stuffing it in its mouth. Kochanski scrambled to her feet, reloaded, and shot it again. It let out a wail of a sigh, and toppled over.

Lister ran to Cat. He lay on the ground, moaning, four parallel slashes on his chest welling up blood. Lister pulled a bandage from the Cat's medical kit and started to do a very bad job of bandaging the wound. Kochanski walked over, pushed him aside, and started to cut away Cat's shirt and bandagethe cutscorrectly. "Go take care of Rimmer."

Kryten stood over where Rimmer lay, fiddling with the psi-scan. "How's he doing, Krytes?" Lister asked.

"He appears to be horizontal, sir," Kryten replied, looking at the readout.

Lister sighed and bent down next to Rimmer. He was moaning and holding his head, but Lister could see no evidence of cuts or breaks anywhere on his body. "Hey, man," he said, holding up his hand. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Just the middle one."

"Who am I?"

"You're a git."

Lister nodded, satisfied that Rimmer was all right. He helped the man to his feet, and walked over to where Kochanski was tending Cat. She had given him a local anesthetic, and followed it with a dose of systemic pep-juice. "Aww, is white the only color you had?" he whinged, looking at the bandage. "Black and yellow is badass. White and yellow? Dweeb city!"

Kochanski ignored him. "Let's get the... thing back to the lander."

Kryten and Lister did most of the work of dragging the beast back. Kochanski herded the Cat, a job for which she was uniquely suited, and Rimmer stared intently at the beast, prodding it every few minutes, despite Kochanski's assurance that it was out very, very cold.

They piled into the lander, then sat there shivering as Lister tried to convince the remote controller back up at flight control that yes, they had the life-form, and no, he wasn't just taking the piss or trying to get back alive without justification. The controller eventually received grudging permission from Ackerman to bring them back up, and the door closed with a jolt. They all hung tight to the bench as the lander made an ungraceful takeoff and spun drunkenly back to Red Dwarf.

Rimmer got more comfortable with the beast the longer it remained motionless. He had taken to kicking it by the time they arrived, and was quite elated that they had captured it alive. Lister was sure that, in his own mind, he had captured it single-handedly. He sighed as Rimmer sauntered jovially out of the lander to join the very small lineup under Ackerman's disappointed stare. The 'lab boys' - a bit of a misnomer, as half were women, but the name stuck - dragged the GELF out of the lander, strapped it to a pitifully undersized gurney, and started to push it to the lab, puffing heavily. Two more of them took the injured Cat with them. "Being the prettiest don't mean nothin' in _this _bunch," he muttered, glancing disdainfully at his escort.

Lister kept a close watch on Rimmer's smug grin out of the corner of his eye. This did not bode well. Now was the time when Ackerman would be touchiest, and now was the time to scuttle out of his glare with all haste and hide in the dark until he moved on to other things. Cockroaches, Rimmer, Lister tried to project. Think cockroaches. Shouldn't be too hard.

Ackerman strode up and down the short line, his arms crossed, grimacing. "So. It looks like you survived."

"Yes, sir," Rimmer said through a smirk. "So sorry to let you down."

Ackerman halted his stride in front of Rimmer. "You think this is _amusing_, eh?"

Shut _up_, Rimmer, Lister thought fiercely. Just shut up already!

"Hmmm, let me think..." Rimmer tapped his lip with his forefinger, projecting the attitude that always made Lister want to kick him in the nuts, back when they bunked together three million and two hundred-some-odd years ago. And if _Lister_ wanted to kick him in the nuts... "Erm, yes, I do rather think it's actually terribly funny."

Ackerman's fist was out and back in again almost too quickly for Lister to track. Rimmer doubled over with a strangled "Whumph."

"Thank you for the debriefing," Ackerman snarled. He nodded, and the guards started to prod Kochanski, Lister, and Kryten out of the room. Lister tried to turn as he heard something that sounded like a kick, and the guard prodded the small of his back more forcefully with his gun. Kochanski caught his eye and gave a small shrug, as if to say, "what can we do?" What, indeed. And some small part of Lister thought, maybe Rimmer will actually _learn _something. Isn't that how his Rimmer learned, and became less of a smeghead? Hard knocks?

------

Lister lay on his bunk a half-hour later, trying to stay awake despite the mandated lights-out. It had been a long day.

_His_ Rimmer. When had he started thinking of him in that way? The dead one, the hologram - _his_ Rimmer? Probably back when he first learned there could be more than one - back when Ace dropped in. Goddam, that had been a revelation. To see what potential Rimmer had in him - what potential _his_ Rimmer had in him. That was also when some part of his mind had started to nag at him with the thought - if _his_ Rimmer were more like Ace, Lister might actually love him. And he did. He loved a dead man. And now the man brought back to life feels more like his corpse.

His brooding was interrupted by Rimmer trying to sneak in unnoticed. He was holding his side awkwardly, and puffed out a painful breath with every step. Lister waited until Rimmer had collapsed stiffly onto the bunk below with a quiet moan, and slipped off of his own bunk to sit beside the man.

"Oi, mate, how you doin?"

"Very badly," Rimmer muttered. The dim lighting was further dimmed by the shadow of the bunk, and Lister had a hard time reading the man's expression.

"Hey, lemme take a look," Lister replied, reaching out for Rimmer's jumpsuit. Rimmer shrank back, crossing his arms over his chest. Lister sighed. "I won't hurt yeh, man. I just wanna make sure you're all right."

"There's nothing wrong with me that you touching won't make worse," Rimmer snarled, hugging himself more tightly. He winced at that action.

Lister leaned back. "C'mon - I nicked some MJ muscle rub from Baxter two days ago. That'll help some, what?" Lister stood and started to root through his backpack, eventually pulling out a tin labeled 'Verruca Cream.' He knew it would be stolen in turn from him in a minute if he labeled it correctly. He sat back down on Rimmer's bunk, noting that the other man had, at least, uncrossed his arms. Lister twisted open the tin, pulling out a handful of slick cream that would be brilliant green in the light, and still showed that color in the dim illumination of the prison night. He waved it at Rimmer. "C'mon, kit off."

Rimmer did not take his eyes off of Lister's face as he unzipped the jumpsuit and awkwardly slid it off of his torso, pulling the yellow shirt off after. Lister sucked in a breath. Even in the semi-darkness, dark bruises still stood out against Rimmer's white skin, taking the form of fists and various parts of boot. "God," he sighed, as he started to rub the cool cream onto Rimmer's too-warm bruises, "why'd you have to mouth off to Ackerman like that?"

"He deserved it," Rimmer sighed, visibly relaxing as the cream did its work.

"And he thinks you deserved to get the crap beaten outta ya," Lister sighed, dipping in for another dose. "When does it end?"

Rimmer was relaxed enough now that he put up no protest as Lister straddled him to rub the bruises on his shoulders and his arms (shoulders? how did he get bruises there?). "Dunno," he sighed as Lister rubbed the second dose of cream into his shoulders, arms, and neck. Lister started to twist the can closed, and looked up. Perhaps it was just the dim illumination, in which stray shafts of light caught in Rimmer's eyes and caused them to glitter from the slight movement of breathing. Maybe it was because, now that he was so close, he could smell that godawful aftershave that Rimmer always seemed to wear, alive or dead, on a ship or in prison. Maybe it was merely because Lister had been thinking about the hologrammatic Rimmer. But for just one moment, Lister saw in this Rimmer everything he shared with _Lister's_ Rimmer, and Lister, unthinkingly, dropped the jar over the side of the bunk and leaned forward to kiss Rimmer. The other man's mouth opened almost immediately, and Lister shoved his tongue in, marveling - but should he really be surprised? - that this Rimmer, too, tasted of mint and peroxide, and had strong, solid arms that raised to Lister's shoulders as Lister rubbed his hands over them and moved to the slightly hairy chest. God, he did not realize until he started how much he missed this, the taste of the man, the warmth of his mouth, the feel of his body underneath. Rimmer started to push at his clothes, and Lister sighed into his mouth. He pulled back for a breath.

And came back to reality.

As soon as his mouth broke contact with Rimmer's, he realized that the other man's mouth had been open to talk, not to kiss. "What the bloody smeg are you doing?" he gasped, pushing at Lister - not at Lister's clothes. Lister sighed, and for a moment, allowed himself the indulgence of dropping his head onto that warm, solid chest - where he heard the beating of a human heart, not the gentle electrical hum that would lull him to sleep in _his_ Rimmer's arms. He sat up, and the look on his face must have been horrid, because Rimmer lay speechless for a moment. Lister brushed his hand over Rimmer's forehead, as if to reassure himself that it was bare, and sat back to regard the man, for just a moment; breathless, pointlessly offended, H-less, alive - everything _his _Rimmer used to be.

Lister pulled himself up onto his own bunk, his heart sitting in his chest like lead. He tried not to think about _his _Rimmer, and as the mind will do, the more he tried to think, the more he could not get the hologram out of his head. Lister closed his eyes and tried to breathe evenly.

"Lister..." came that damned voice from below - the voice that was and wasn't Rimmer. There was a pause, and Lister knew, without looking, that Rimmer would be licking his lips, knew just what the tongue would look like when it flicked out to run, like a flash, over those lips. A punctuation mark, it was; a sign that the sentence to follow would be important, somehow. Ah, but this was not _his_ Rimmer. To the man below him, the organization of his sock drawer was critically important. "What was he like?"

That question made the answer leap unbidden into Lister's mind. He had your unruly curls and compulsive need to tame them with gel. He had your nasal, irritating whine of a voice. He had your intolerable smugness. He had your body, god help me. He tasted of mint and peroxide, and smelled of cheap aftershave. He kissed me eagerly, and undressed me gently, his own clothes disappearing in a glow of blue light when I ripped them off. He learned how to run his hands up my neck when we kissed, and how to push my back firmly just like _that_ when I was about to come, and it took me into the clouds. He was a git. He was no longer quite so much of a coward.

"Dunno," Lister muttered somberly. He was achingly hard, and knew that he could not wank with _that_ man lying below him, knowing who he would be thinking about. Lister laced his hands over his chest and sighed, staring unseeingly at the ceiling, lying wide awake until the call for the next morning's duty shift.


End file.
